Whose Law Governs the Cloud? | BTalk

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Jeff Bullwinkle

(Episode 505; 12 minutes 23) The shift to cloud computing is a significant one. You need to be convinced that your cloud provider is meeting your security needs. Hopefully this won't be an issue. In many cases the sophistication of the security solution will exceed your on-site data hosting.

That leaves one other big question --- how am I affected by international law, particularly if my data is now stored overseas? For example, am I now subject to the US Patriot Act, George Bush's legislation to intercept data for the purpose of preventing terrorism? Plus that myriad of privacy legislation that exists around the world.

On today's BTalk Microsoft Australia's Legal and Corporate Affairs Director Jeff Bullwinkle points out that you are probably subject to many of these regulations even before you jump into the cloud.

That leaves the bigger question --- what do you need to tell your end users about how and where their data is stored? And how will privacy laws change in the next few years?